


Almost Human

by NotOneLine



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Deckerstar - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existential Angst, Existential Crisis, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Love Confessions, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Post-Episode: s02e16 God Johnson, Sad, Therapy, minor self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2020-04-08 09:58:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19104814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotOneLine/pseuds/NotOneLine
Summary: I'm not the Devil, I'm just a man who's delusional. I made it all up…Post God Johnson. At the end of his 72 hour hold, leaving Westridge Canyon Hospital turns out not to be as easy as Lucifer thinks. As time goes on, the treatment he receives, combined with his vulnerability around the Detective, begins to have consequences more devastating to the Devil than anyone could have imagined...





	1. Chapter 1

" _I've never felt better."_

Those words kept echoing around in her head. Granted, Lucifer had been completely out of it when he said them, but somehow, something about it rang true. Being here, in the hospital... maybe it was actually good for him. The  _right_  thing for him.

Because this case, more so than any other, had been a real eye opener for her. It had taken Lucifer past the realms of 'quirky' and far closer to crazy than she'd ever really wanted to admit. To the outside observer, a man talking about how God was his Father and he was the Devil, they would undoubtedly conclude that an institution was the best place for him. And perhaps they wouldn't be wrong. Had she let their partnership blind her to that?

She watched the man lying in the bed next to her chair, his body uncharacteristically still as he slept off the last of the pills he'd been given. He looked younger when he was asleep, less full of the pain he tried to keep hidden so far under the surface. Sometimes she wondered if anyone else even saw it, other than her. Maybe Linda? She hoped so. He needed to talk to someone about it, and despite her repeated offers to be that person, it was clear she was never going to be.

It was one of the many lessons she'd learned during their time together. Lucifer, his feelings, and her, they didn't mix. He didn't deal with his emotions when they were together; he only ran away from them.

But what if that was what he'd been doing in therapy as well? After all, he'd been seeing Linda since almost the beginning of their partnership. And while she had no doubts about the therapist's skill, Lucifer himself, well, he hadn't exactly changed much, had he? Not where it was important.

Emotional growth was all well and good, but not when you still believed you were Satan.

The next day, he would be out of here, and while part of her would be glad to have him back by her side, the larger part wasn't sure it was the best choice for him at the moment. If he were to stay… what would become of him? What  _could_  become of him? Might they be able to help him? Guide him into changing how he felt about himself, provide him with ways to cope with whatever had happened in the past that had left him this way?

She didn't know, but it felt wrong to rob him of the chance to find out.

If he wanted to find out at all, that is.

Lucifer's eyelids fluttered as he began to stir. "Detective?" he murmured. "You still there?"

Without knowing exactly why, she found herself leaning over to briefly press her lips against his cheek. "Still here," she replied softly. He rolled over towards her, a lazy smile upon his face.

"You should wake me up like that every morning," he said, the words slightly slurred, his mind not quite out of the grasp of sleep yet.

She stood up from the chair, rolling her eyes fondly. "Yeah… I bet you'd just  _love_  that. Unfortunately for you, it's evening, and I need to get home to Trixie."

He continued to smile dopily at her, and she had to bite her lip in order to keep herself from laughing. "I  _would_ love that," he stated, a fact as plain as the sun rising in the east.

_Lucifer doesn't lie._

Before she could think any further on it though, he started to push himself up from the bed. "Woah, there," she said, touching a hand to his chest and stopping him in his tracks. "Where do you think you're going?"

"I'm coming with you, aren't I?" There was a certain innocence to his voice that tugged at her heart strings. A normal, fully aware Lucifer would have brushed off the idea of staying here as preposterous, striding out of the door before she had a hope in hell of stopping him.

This Lucifer, however, he sounded saddened by the very idea that she would leave him behind. It was moments like these she was reminded of just how much faith he placed in her. Sometimes too much, she felt. He'd put her on a pedestal so high that she worried how he would react the day she inevitably tumbled from it.

"Your 72 hour hold isn't up yet," she reminded him, before gently encouraging him to lie back down on the bed.

"But we solved the case!" he protested. Despite that though, he went willingly, making no move to fight her.

"You're right, we did." His head hit the pillow once more, and he relaxed back into it. Unable to resist, she bopped him on the nose with her finger, as he had done to her so many times in the past. "But someone had to go and get themselves committed, didn't they?"

"Well, I—"

"And assault the receptionist."

"That was—"

"And punch another patient."

Finally, Lucifer closed his mouth, obviously considering any attempt to argue further a useless endeavor.

He managed to stay silent for all of 30 seconds.

"I did help with the case though, correct?"

She chuckled to herself. "Yes, Lucifer, you helped with the case. And managed to leave me with a  _ton_ of paperwork to deal with before I can get you out of here tomorrow."

A sly grin crossed his face, and suddenly the partner she knew and lov—knew and _liked,_  was back. "Oh, well, if you have  _paperwork_ to do, Detective, don't let me keep you. I'll be a good Devil and wait right here, seeing as you  _insist._ " With that, he reclined even further back onto the bed, his arms behind his head.

And just like she did once a day, every day, she resisted the urge to punch him.

Shaking her head, she grabbed her things. "See you tomorrow, Lucifer," she called out behind her as she headed out of the door.

"Goodnight, Detective!" he shouted after her, his voice following her down the corridor.

With a deep breath, she tried to concentrate on the evening ahead with her daughter, and not on the mess she was going to have to deal with in the morning.

…

Unfortunately, it was a mess that turned out to be worse than she'd anticipated. In fact, it was nothing short of a shitshow.

Not only had Lucifer managed to bulldoze his way through any semblance of proper procedure  _twice_  on this case, but the news of his committance had reached much higher up the food chain than she. And they weren't happy.

It was one thing having an oddball for a consultant who still managed to get the job done. Their solve rate together easily topped anyone else in the department. But it was another thing entirely to have someone working in conjunction with the police who was actively disrupting cases  _and_  being diagnosed as mentally ill by psychiatrists.

She spent all day dreading having to return to the hospital, knowing that what she had to say was going to go down like a lead balloon.  _This isn't your fault,_ she kept telling herself.  _You weren't the one who rushed in headlong, just like he always does._

The whole thing was made worse of course, by the fact that Lucifer was waiting for her in reception. He rose as she entered, his usual jubilant welcome on his lips. Before he could speak though, she grabbed him by the elbow, tugging him out through the side door. "Just taking him out for a walk around the gardens!" she said hurriedly to the member of staff on duty, who merely nodded before turning their attention to the waiting room television once more.

"Taking me out for a  _what_?" Lucifer exclaimed, completely aghast. "I am not a dog, Detective."

She sighed, exasperated with him already. "Just walk with me, okay? I need to talk to you."

His pace slowed. "Well that's never good."

It would be a lie if she told him otherwise. And she knew how much he hated liars.

"Come on," she said, gesturing to a nearby bench.

"Shouldn't we be filling out forms and securing my freedom?" he asked as they sat down, worry creasing the corners of his eyes.

"We will"—he visibly relaxed at her words—"but... not if you want to come back to work anytime soon."

He blinked, and for a moment the expression on his face was unreadable. "You don't want me to come back to work?" he said after a few seconds.

"No!" Upon seeing his horrified reaction, she quickly clarified. "That's not what I meant at all."

She took a long, deep breath. "Lucifer, you had yourself committed. Do you understand what that means?"

Looking at her as though  _she_ were the stupid one, his eyes narrowed, and he carefully replied, "Yesss… it means I've served my time, and now I get to go home, go back to work."

"Lucifer"—she moved closer to him, her hand on his arm—"it's not as simple as that. You were deemed a danger to yourself and others. You can't just waltz back into working with the LAPD after that."

She felt his muscles tense as he clenched his fist. "But I was undercover."

"Yes, and I can't  _prove_ that. And as far as I can tell, there's only one way out of this."

"There's always more than one way, Detective," he said, raising an eyebrow.

"No." Shaking her head, she tried to explain. "There's no talking your way out of this one, no deals to be made. There's a paperwork trail a mile long that started the moment you were admitted, and even Ella can't make it disappear."

Leaning back against the bench, he crossed his legs, the picture of nonchalance. She saw right through it though. "What do you suggest then?" he asked.

Now, this was the big one. "Stay. Get better."

Again with the eyebrow. "I already see a therapist, as you're well aware."

"Oh, and how's that working out for you? Still believe you're the Devil?"

His face grew sullen. Before she'd met Lucifer she never would have believed a man could  _pout_ so much. He was worse than Trixie when he decided to sulk over something. And this from a man who claimed to be older than creation.

"I  _am_  the—"

"Yes, I get it," she snapped, more harshly than she intended. She dropped her head into her hands for a moment, before sitting up again with a sigh. "Look, you have two choices. You can get up right now, and walk out of here"—he started to do just that, before she put her hand on his leg to stop him—"but our partnership ends today."

He immediately sat back down.

"Or," she continued, "you stay. It's the quickest way to get this sorted I can think of. You do what the doctors tell you, take what they give you; whatever it takes for them deem you fit to work again."

She turned towards him then, pleading with him to understand. "All you have to do is tell them you're not the Devil, Lucifer."

The look he gave her in return was grave. "I can't lie, Detective, you know that."

It was cards on the table time.

"It's not a lie. Surely, deep down, you  _must_ know that. The Devil is supposed to be, what, evil incarnate? That's not you."

"You're right," he said, all trace of joviality vanishing. "I'm not evil. But I  _am_  the Devil, and frankly it's about bloody time you believed that."

"I can't." She raised her hand to touch his cheek. "You're not a monster, Lucifer. I just don't see you that way."

He flinched away from her, standing abruptly. "Well maybe you need to look harder," he snapped bitterly.

For a moment, she thought he was going to walk away, away from this place  _and_ from her, but to her surprise, he picked up his things and gave a short, sharp nod instead.

"Very well, Detective. You have my word. I'll do as you ask and play this little game."

"And I'll see what I can do from my end as well," she promised, standing to join him and putting what she hoped was a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Hopefully you won't have to be in here too long."

…

Three weeks later, and she was starting to see just how naive that hope had been.

As she'd suspected, her efforts to get Lucifer out of there were quickly met with a brick wall. Her superiors weren't interested in 'missing' paperwork and testimony from a suspended therapist; not when they had reports sitting in their hands from other officers who had witnessed his violent behaviour in the past. It would have been bad enough had he been an officer himself, but as a consultant, the department had no real need to work with him, despite their success together. The situation was clear; he was either declared mentally fit, or Lucifer Morningstar would no longer have a place in the LAPD.

It was all on her partner to get himself out now. And from what she could see, it wasn't going well.

The first week, he'd been amiable enough. His ability to charm the orderlies had earned him an almost endless supply of jello, his fellow patients provided him with plenty of interesting stories to hear, and he had been delighted to discover that playing the piano somehow counted as therapy. It was enough to keep him fairly entertained, especially the latter, considering the piano had pretty much always been therapy for him anyway.

By the second week though, he was starting to get frustrated. He would spend her visits stalking back and forth across the floor, endlessly complaining about what he now referred to as his "prison". Often the first thing he said to her when she arrived was an enquiry as to when he would be leaving. She had no answer for him. He was doing as she had asked, but from what he'd told her of his therapy sessions, the psychiatrists were getting nowhere with him. She felt sorry for them in a way; sometimes it was bad enough just  _working_  with him; she couldn't imagine what he was like as a patient. It hadn't exactly escaped her attention that Linda only ever ordered shots on tribe nights that fell on the same day as one of his sessions.

They were at the start of the third week now, and it had reached the point where he didn't even seem to be enjoying the drugs the hospital provided him with anymore. Drugs that, from what she could tell, seemed to change in quantity every time she set foot in the place.

It was a question she had decided to ask at the end of one of her visits, as the medicine cups were dispensed around the room. "I can't really discuss…" the nurse started to say, but when Lucifer smiled at her, Chloe literally saw her resolve fade away. "Mr. Morningstar appears to have an unusual resistance to medication," she explained. "The doctors are struggling to get his prescription right, without going beyond the maximum dosage limits, that is."

Lucifer swallowed his meds in one gulp, giving the nurse a wink afterwards. "Thank you, darling," he said, dismissing her with another charming smile. The woman blinked twice before shaking her head, as though coming out of a daze. With one nervous look at Chloe, she scurried away.

"See, Detective! I  _told_ you I had a supernatural metabolism!"

He sounded happy enough, but there was something in his voice that caught her attention. She watched as his pupils dilated before her eyes, the drugs he'd taken clearly having an effect. So either the doctors had it wrong, or they'd just this second magically stumbled upon a combination that worked, the very same day she found out there was a problem in the first place.

It wasn't long after that until it was time for Lucifer's next session, and Chloe resolved to take the issue up with his doctor before she left. They said their goodbyes, her partner unexpectedly drawing her into a hug, holding her much closer than he normally would as he sank into her embrace. She had to admit, there was some part of her that liked the softer part of him; it was just a shame it took mind altering substances to release it.

As it turned out though, there was no need for her to hunt down Lucifer's doctor. When she left the common room, she was taken aside by one of the staff and directed to an office, where the head psychologist at Westridge was waiting for her. There, he reiterated the problems they'd been having, albeit in terms that were much more vague than the nurse's had been, but with a new, added observation.

Things were different when she was there.

Apparently, they had surmised that something about her presence allowed the drugs they were prescribing to have their intended effect; Lucifer was calmer around her, more relaxed, and they believed that to be the key. His sessions following her time here, although still fraught by the end, found him far more receptive than on the days she didn't make an appearance.

The doctor informed her that, with her permission, they planned to request that the department allow her to visit more frequently. She would continue to spend time with Lucifer as she had been doing, but remain until after his therapy had finished, at which point she could help appease him if necessary.

Naturally, she agreed. She wanted to help, especially if it meant getting him out of here sooner.

And so, one month after Lucifer had agreed to stay, this is where they found themselves. To her amazement, her bosses had granted her the time she needed for visitation, in reverence to the good work their consultant had done for them during his time there. She spent at least a couple of hours at the hospital daily, even on the weekends, with Trixie more than willing to stay with her dad or Maze if it meant making Lucifer happier. Of course, her monkey begged to go herself, but Chloe insisted a mental institution was not the place for children.

Although sometimes, she had a nagging doubt that it was the place for her partner either.

The change had been rapid, once she started seeing him more regularly. At first, she thought it was a good thing. He no longer came back from seeing his psychiatrist in a temper, his body shaking with the effort not to rant and rave about whatever had been brought up in his session, the anger he felt easily overpowering whatever medication he'd been given beforehand. Instead, he went from that to quietly seething, and then eventually to mildly annoyed and frustrated. Yesterday though, and today, he was just quiet full stop.

"How did it go?" she asked, as the orderly left and he slumped down onto the sofa, his expression vacant. "Lucifer?"

He looked at her, but the ever present spark in his eyes was missing. When he spoke, his voice was unsteady. "Did anyone ever ask you something… something that made you question everything?"

"I don't know," she replied honestly. Having thought about it for a few seconds, she added, "I guess, during Palmetto? With Dan? I certainly ended up questioning myself a lot back the—"

"No," he said sharply, lunging forward to grasp her wrist. " _Everything,_ Detective. Your whole  _life._ "

Instinctively, she tried to pull her hand away, but his grip was too fierce. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a guard take a step towards them, but she surreptitiously shook her head. "No...? I mean, I don't think so."

His face twitched, and she fought the urge to gather him into her arms. That didn't seem to be what he needed right now.

"What happened, Lucifer? What did they ask you?"

He shook his head, tugging her towards him ever so slightly. "I want you to do something for me. I want you to imagine you are God. The same God that cast his favourite son into Hell for disobeying him, who banished him to burn for eternity for his sins, condemning him to torture those just as guilty as he was."

She nodded, her eyes wide.

He moved even closer, his eyes boring into hers, a darkness she could get lost in if she wasn't careful.

"Tell me, Detective.  _Tell me._ If you could be that cruel, that unforgiving as to consider Hell to be a suitable punishment for your son…  _why would you ever let him leave?_ "

He let go of her, his pain and confusion evident, and when she didn't immediately answer, he got up and walked away.

All she could do was watch, as her partner left the room that day just a little more broken.

He had built this illusion of himself as the Devil around him like armour.

And that was the first crack.


	2. Chapter 2

The call came through at 2.30am. Her ringtone shrieked into the darkness, disturbing what had been quite a nice dream about… Lucifer completing paperwork? She smirked to herself as she groggily reached out to grasp for her phone. It had certainly been different to her usual dreams about Lucifer and her desk at the precinct.

"Decker," she grumbled, pulling the covers up around her tightly with her other hand. This had better not be anything that required her to get out of bed. Trixie was with Dan for the night, and she had a long lie in planned before her daily visit to the hospital.

"Ms. Decker? This is Westridge Canyon Hospital. We have you down as an emergency contact for a patient, Mr. Morningstar?"

Instantly awake, she shot upright. "What's happened, is he okay?"

"He's unharmed… but there has been an incident. Do you think you could come in?"

She was already in the middle of grabbing her clothes before they finished speaking. "I'll be right there."

…

The traffic in LA was never-ending, but thankfully at this time of night it was at least  _slightly_ quieter. For once, she broke the rules, switching on her siren and weaving in and out of traffic with ease, almost as though she'd been taking lessons from the man normally riding shotgun by her side.

All the way there, her mind raced with what could have happened. Lucifer, while still insisting on calling himself the Devil, had at least been making  _some_ progress. Questioning his beliefs at every turn, even if he didn't always reach the right conclusion. The point was that he had finally begun to have doubts, and as far as she was concerned, that had to be a step in the right direction.

But although he'd been struggling, it was generally after sessions, not outside of that. By all accounts, he was much like his normal self when she wasn't there. Perhaps quieter than normal, according to one of the nurses, but she'd put that down to contemplation. His discussions with the doctors were raising a lot of issues for him, and while he'd occasionally returned to lashing out if he hadn't liked the nature of the conversation, it had never been  _that_ bad. Certainly not up to a level that would constitute an 'incident'. Were things worse than she knew though? Had he been bottling his rage up, trying not to let her see how much he was hurting?

She wouldn't put it past him.

When she arrived, the hospital was mainly dark, but down the main corridor, towards where the common and music therapy rooms lay, there were lights. She ran towards them, ignoring the receptionist's repeated requests that she sign in.

There were frantic shouts coming from inside the music room that she immediately recognised as Lucifer, but it was the screams from the common room that left a shudder running down her spine, thanks to the absolute terror contained within them. Screams that cut off rapidly as she ground to a halt. The door to the room opened a few seconds later, and a nurse emerged. "We managed to sedate her, finally," he said, sounding weary. There was a note of something else in his voice though, something strange.  _Fear?_ He looked at the doctor next to him. "Any luck?"

The man in the white coat shook his head. "No. He's too strong. We can't get near him."

_Lucifer._

She rushed over. "What's going on?"

"Ah, Ms. Decker." The look of relief upon the doctor's face was palpable. "Mr. Morningstar has had… an episode I'm afraid. Despite our best efforts, we've been unable to get through to him. We were hoping you might be of some assistance? Has this happened before?"

"An episode? No? Not as far as I'm aware..." she replied, her mind already running away with her. What did they mean, an  _episode?_ Lucifer didn't  _have_ episodes, did he?

"Possibly a side effect of the new treatment then," the doctor mused.

They were still experimenting with his medication it seemed.

She heard another shout, and the sound of something like a chair being thrown across the room. "Let me in there," she demanded, leaving the doctor behind as she marched towards the door.

"It's not safe," said the nurse from the common room, a warning she had no intention of heeding. She pushed past him with a glare.

"I'm a trained police officer, and he is my partner. I don't care if it's not safe, I'm going in there."

Her own safety didn't matter to her, not right then. How many times had Lucifer risked his for her? And he'd never hurt her, she knew that. She had talked him down from far worse than whatever this was, and she could do it again.

Opening the door, she slipped into the room.

Lucifer stood in the centre, his hair and clothes dishevelled, a low growl emanating from his throat as he slowly moved around the room. There were what she assumed were guards circling him, with a couple of nurses lurking behind. Judging by the way the furniture was scattered about, they'd been trying to subdue him for a while.

"Lucifer?" she said quietly, and he immediately spun around to face her, his eyes wild. He looked feral.

"Chloe…" he breathed, shrinking into himself.

She smiled at him, trying to appear as normal as possible. "What's going on?" she said casually, almost cheerfully. Just a nice chat about the day's events, nothing more than that. She took a step towards him, and he took one back.

"I'm sorry," he said, shaking his head, "I didn't mean to."

This time, as he stared at the ground, she managed to move slightly closer without him noticing. His frame trembled, illuminated only by the moonlight outside and the light coming from the doorway. Why they hadn't turned the lights on in the room itself, she had no idea.

"Didn't mean to do what?" she asked, holding her hands up as she came even nearer, indicating she wasn't going to hurt him.

He said something, too quiet for her to hear. She edged just a few more steps across the room. If she could just touch him, she'd be able to bring him back to himself, she was sure of it.

"What did you do, Lucifer?"

" _I HURT HER!"_

The words were torn from his throat, violent and raw. Utter despair wracked his features, and she desperately wanted to hold him, to give him any kind of comfort. But just as she got close enough, she caught movement from behind.

His eyes widened as a needle plunged deep into his neck, before promptly rolling into the back of his head. He rocked forward, collapsing to his knees in front of her. She barely got down in time to catch him before he face planted into the floor, the two of them ending up a tangled mess of limbs, her body half crushed beneath him.

It was over.

An orderly rushed over to help her up as Lucifer's limp form was lifted onto a trolley by the men who had pulled him off her. " _Careful_ ," she snapped at one of them, as he carelessly allowed her partner's limbs smack into the metal. The look the guard gave her in return was stone cold. Whatever had happened here, it hadn't been good. For Lucifer, or for whoever else had been involved.

She watched with dismay as they wheeled him out of the door. The next thing she knew, there was a hand upon her arm, guiding her along the corridor into a nearby office. As the adrenaline wore off and the late hour set in, she gratefully sank down into the offered chair. An unfamiliar doctor sat on the opposite side of the desk.

"What happened?" she asked, hoping he could provide some answers.

"Well," he said, removing his glasses and cleaning them as he spoke, "it appears Mr. Morningstar decided to break into the music therapy in the middle of the night. Security reported that they heard the piano being played a couple of hours before the incident, but apparently whomever was sent to investigate decided to let the patient be."

That didn't surprise her; she knew just how charming Lucifer could be when he wanted something. "He likes to play when he can't sleep," she explained with a fond smile, remembering the time he'd mentioned that in amongst her complaints about her own insomnia during particularly difficult cases.

"He shouldn't have been able to get in there at all," the doctor said irately, replacing his glasses and sliding what she assumed to be Lucifer's open file towards him. "We keep the doors locked at night for a reason."

Chloe grimaced. "He does have a way with locks."

"That may well be," he replied, tapping the paperwork in front of him. "The fact of the matter is, we're unsure exactly what happened after that, only what the end result was. Security cameras in the hallway show him entering around 11.30pm, however the cameras don't operate overnight when the room isn't in use. Nurse Bridges entered the room around 1.45am, and, well…"

"Well, what?" she prompted, already dreading the answer.

"The guards found her… inconsolably distressed, shall we say. Our staff are trained to deal with delusional patients, but in this case it seems the training was… inadequate. We have relocated her to another part of the hospital for the time being."

_Translation: We've locked her up like any other patient. Because she is one now._

Even though she was pretty damn sure what the response was going to be, Chloe felt she had to ask the question anyway. "How do you know it was Lucifer?"

The doctor looked at her seriously, before closing the file. "She couldn't stop screaming about the Devil."

…

It seemed like forever until Lucifer's unnatural sleep came to an end. His steady breathing became uneven once more, the sign of a man waking up in surroundings he didn't know, still wracked with panic from a situation he wasn't quite conscious enough to remember yet. Chloe rose before he could start struggling against his restraints and placed one reassuring hand over his heart, forever confident that he would never strike out against her.

He stilled, and she watched as he came back to full awareness. "Hey you," she said, hoping the smile she gave him was at least in some way comforting. She turned to the guard behind her. "We'll be okay now." He looked doubtful, but the insistent stare she directed at him wasn't to be argued with.

"I'll be right outside," he said, and she nodded.

"Detective?"

She'd never heard Lucifer sound so weak. So… afraid. Facing him again, she ran her fingers over his forehead, brushing back an errant curl there. They hadn't allowed him his straighteners in the hospital, and his hair was becoming more curly by the day. It had taken all of her self-restraint not to tell him how adorable he looked like that.

Somehow, she doubted he'd take it as a compliment.

"I'm here," she said, scratching at his scalp lightly. He leaned his head back into her touch. "How are you feeling?"

"Like someone hit me over the head and filled my mouth with cotton wool, quite frankly," he replied, squinting into the light. His tongue flicked out to wet his bottom lip, and she averted her eyes. Despite everything that had happened, after their kiss she still found herself annoyingly distracted by him sometimes, even during completely inappropriate situations such as this. "What happened?"

How was she supposed to answer that? "Let me get you some water," she said quickly instead, avoiding the question and awkwardly darting out of the room. The guard gave her a questioning look, and she waved the empty plastic cup at him as she approached the cooler. Successfully reassured that everything was fine, he nodded and went back to watching the empty corridor.

When she returned, Lucifer had managed to shift himself further up the bed, but he was prevented from moving any further by the binds on his wrists. Surprisingly, he appeared to have made no attempt to free himself during her absence. Placing the water on a nearby table, she adjusted the head of the bed until he was in a more seated position, before retrieving the cup and lifting it to his lips. He drank from it gratefully, his eyes never once leaving hers. "Detective, why am I restrained?"

"Do you remember what happened?" she asked softly, discarding the now empty cup and pulling her chair closer to the bed.

His brow furrowed. "I wanted to play." She stayed silent, and he shrugged slightly. "I couldn't sleep. There's not exactly much in the way of entertainment here when that happens." He paused, but when she failed to speak, he continued on. "If they don't want people to play the piano, they shouldn't bloody well have one in the first place!" The attempt at mock outrage fell flat, the slight cracking in his voice betraying him. He pulled slightly against his bindings. "This seems a bit extreme, don't you think?"

"Lucifer, you said you hurt someone."

He blinked, and suddenly his eyes were focused elsewhere in the room, on anything that wasn't her. "I didn't mean to," he repeated again.

She reached forward, clasping his hand. "I know. I know you wouldn't do that, not on purpose."

He flinched. "Then you don't know me as well as you think you do, Detective. I've done exactly that, and far,  _far_ worse."

"But not today."

Finally, he looked at her. "No. Not today."

She squeezed his hand. "So, what happened?"

"Eventually I got tired, and I decided to lie down on the sofa." He sighed. "It was stupid. Reckless. But the beds in this place are so uncomfortable…" Wiggling his toes, he demonstrated just how much his feet hung over the edge of the too small mattress.

"Why would that be reckless?" she asked, confused.

"Because I put her in danger. I put  _everybody_ in danger." Seeing that she still didn't understand, he took a deep breath, the tension in his frame increasing as he started to elaborate.

"You see, Detective, sometimes I have… dreams. Hell, demons, torture… my fa—" He broke off, his fingers clenching around hers. "I lock the memories away as best I can, but they never really leave."

She nodded. "You have nightmares."

He looked at her gravely. "Not just nightmares, Detective." Tilting his head to the side, he regarded her for a moment. "I wonder, can you remember the worst thing that's ever happened to you? The time you were the most frightened in your life?"

The image of Malcolm holding Trixie came to her, sending a shiver down her spine. "Yes," she whispered.

"And what do you recall? The panic? The pain? The overwhelming need to run, to cry, to do anything that wasn't just giving in to the fear?"

She shook her head. "No, not to run. Not unless it was with her."

"Ah." He briefly tightened his grip again, but this time as an acknowledgment, immediately understanding what she was saying. It was one of the things she loved about their partnership; that sometimes, they could speak without words.

"But what do your memories consist of? What you saw, what you felt, I would imagine?"

"Yes, both of those," she said, wondering where he was going with this.

He turned towards her, shifting his body as much as he could manage so that he lay on his side, one hand uncomfortably stretched across his back as he looked at her with dark eyes. "Imagine if you could recall every detail. Not just the sights, not just the feelings, but the sounds, the smells,  _everything._ From the way the air weighed you down, stifling the breath in your lungs, to the bite of metal and stone across your skin as you struggled to gain freedom. The smell of your own blood as you burned, the light blinding and as unforgiving as those who ignored the screams ripped from your very soul. Endless torture as you fe—"

Letting go of her hand, he let his body fall flat again. "Well, you know the story."

"Lucifer…" she breathed, entirely lost on how to respond.

"It's rare that it happens. And thankfully, never when I have… company. I believe my victim may have awoken me during the worst time possible."

Chloe closed her eyes, shaking her head. "Lucifer, she's not your  _victim._ "

"Isn't she?" he said cynically, raising an eyebrow. "Tell me, Detective, how  _unharmed_ is she exactly."

She sighed. "As far as I know, there are no physical injuries."

When he turned his body this time, it was away from her. "That would have been better," he said, his words slightly muffled from the way he was pressing his face into the pillow.

"Better? How on earth would that have been  _better_ , Lucifer?"

He didn't say a word. She got up from her chair, walking to the other side of the bed, crouching down and forcing him to look at her. "Why would it have been better? Tell me."

"Because I showed her," he said bitterly. "And she'll never forget it. It will haunt her every living moment, until the day she dies."

The utter misery in his voice took her breath away. "She was innocent," he continued, dropping his eyes to the floor. "She didn't deserve that."

Placing a hand against his cheek, she encouraged him to look at her again. "What did you show her?" she asked, as gently as she could.

He huffed slightly, and shook his head against her palm. "A month ago, I would have had an answer for you on that, Detective. But now? I'm not so sure. All I know is that I showed her  _me._ Who I truly am."

Another hand came up, until she held his face fully. "Lucifer, you're  _not_ the Devil." She was determined to keep telling him that until the day he finally believed it.

Resignation dulled the light in his eyes. "That's where you're mistaken I'm afraid. As I keep telling you,  _I am._ "

Her heart sinking, she removed her hands. As she withdrew though, her arm brushed one of his restraints, and he caught it.

"But…"

She looked at him, sudden hope bursting within.

"What if I'm wrong? Does that make it any better? To be human, yet still able to do  _this_ to someone?"

His eyes grew wet, and she threw herself around him, embracing him as best she could, despite the awkward positioning.

"I never wanted to be a monster," he whispered quietly into her shoulder, his voice catching as he tried to hold back the tears. "I still don't."

He drew in a shaky breath, and pulled back far enough as he could look her in the eye.

"Detective... I don't want to be the Devil anymore."


	3. Chapter 3

Another month passed.

Dan and Ella came to see Lucifer whenever they could, but it wasn't as often as they would have liked. Between their caseload and the fact that Chloe was there so much, very little time was left for any other visitors.

Ella in particular had taken Lucifer's diagnosis hard. To her, he'd never been anything but a method actor, an assumption she was now feeling incredibly guilty about it. She blamed herself for having never once connected the dots, and realising he was a man who desperately needed help.

Chloe knew just how she felt.

But she needed the eggs, didn't she? And in doing so, she'd ignored what  _he_ needed.

Her regret over that was all consuming.

Maze had yet to visit, refusing to get caught up in, "Whatever stupid game Lucifer was playing now." Amenadiel had treated the situation very much the same way in the beginning, but he had at least been by a few times after what happened. At first, that pleased her. Lucifer had mentioned many times in passing how poorly his family treated him; it was good to see at least one of them show some concern.

When she expressed that sentiment to Lucifer though, he scoffed at the idea. "My brother visits for no other reason than at the behest of my mother, Detective. I am, after all, ruining their plan for us all to go home."

Her heart promptly dropped into her stomach at that. "You were planning to leave?" she asked, although what she really wanted to say was,  _"Leave me again?"_

His hand closed around hers as he smiled. "I would have come back. I always come back, don't I?"

He wasn't wrong. It didn't make the thought of him leaving hurt any less though.

The subject of his brother's visits didn't come up much after that. Linda, of course, hadn't been allowed to visit at all. Chloe kept her updated, but the doctor's reaction to the situation hadn't been what she expected. Like Ella, she thought she might feel guilty for not helping him more. At least a  _little._

Instead, Linda seemed more concerned about him being  _in_  the hospital than about  _why_ he was actually there. Almost as if she didn't think he should be there. Admittedly, at one point Chloe had briefly wondered the same thing, especially after what had happened with the nurse. But when she offered him the option of leaving, despite the cost to their working relationship, he'd refused, insisting that he wanted to stay, wanted to "get better" as she'd originally asked him to.

Since then, Lucifer had done what he always did. He'd made a decision, and thrown himself into following through with it. That decision being, of course, that he didn't want to be the Devil anymore. Didn't  _want_ this title he had created for himself. And so, with the agreement of his psychologist, his treatment had gradually changed.

No longer did his sessions aim to slowly chip away at the belief that he was the Devil, edging him towards the eventual realisation that he was, in fact, human. Now Lucifer approached therapy determined to accept that truth. Rather than defend himself, he actively looked for the inconsistencies in his life, searching for the proof that he wasn't the Devil, that he had never  _been_ the Devil.

And every time Chloe visited, he seemed to believe it a little more.

...

"Hey."

Lucifer was in the common room when she arrived, sat on the sofa with what looked like a sketchpad in his hands. He looked different today, less… weighed down, though there were still dark circles under his eyes. The consequence of yet more sleepless nights, she could only assume. He smiled as she took a seat in the armchair next to him.

"Hello, Chloe."

_Wrong._

That was the immediate sensation that washed over her when he said her name. As though it were ordinary. Logically, of course, she knew that it was. As a moniker, "Chloe" was hardly unique, and it was  _her name_ after all, something that people used when addressing her every single day.

Everyone except Lucifer that is. To him, she'd always been the "Detective".

But not today.

"How are you?" she said, trying not to let her unease colour her voice.

His pencil stopped moving across the page, but he didn't look up. "I'm not entirely certain, if I'm honest."

"You seem a little happier," she observed, noting the ease with which he reclined against the seat, a kind of peace emanating from him that she couldn't remember ever having seen before.

He shook his head, and started to draw once more. "Not happy exactly, I don't think. I felt happiness once; this isn't it."

Despite herself, she chuckled slightly, only to immediately regret it when he paused again, his face falling. "Come on, Lucifer, you've been happy more than once, I've seen it!"

Those dark eyes of his met hers, regarding her seriously. "Not truly, completely happy. Not like…"

"Not like what?"

"Not like when I—when _he_ thought it was real."

A memory flashed into her mind. The look of wonder in his eyes. The way he'd touched her face. Almost as if he couldn't believe it.

_This is real, isn't it?_

The revelation left her feeling empty and confused. What they had between them… he thought it wasn't real? Was that why he ran away?

His eyes dropped to the sketchpad in front of him. "But it was a lie. Just like everything else."

She didn't know what to say. Should she reassure him, that it  _wasn't_ a lie? Was that even the case anymore, after his disappearing act? She cared about him deeply, but she didn't know if she could open herself up to that kind of hurt again. And with everything he was going through at the moment...

Lucifer snapped his fingers. "Content! That's the word. The doctors say I'm making great progress."

"That's good…" she replied absentmindedly. There was something bugging her, something buzzing in the corner of her mind… and then it struck. "Wait a minute… you said he? Not 'I',  _he."_

"Ah, yes." He looked sheepish for a moment. "I've been meaning to talk to you about that actually."

He put down the pad and began to wring his hands in his lap, the action so unlike Lucifer that for a moment, she struggled to see that it was the same person in front of her.

Unfortunately, she had no idea how right she was.

"I'd like for you to stop calling me Lucifer."

Her eyebrows couldn't have lifted any higher if she'd tried. "But that's… that's your name," she stammered.

"That's it," he said, shaking his head. "I'm not sure that it  _is."_

He sighed and shuffled along the sofa until he was closer to her. Hesitantly, he took her hand, the look in his eyes silently asking if that was okay. And just for a second, there was her partner again.

"So much of my life has been lies, Chloe. And that name… it just feels like another one. I want to put it behind me, I want to—to separate myself from who he was, I guess. You said once that going backwards was not good for anyone. Do you still believe that?"

She nodded mutely.

"Well then," he said, giving her a small smile. "That's what I want to do. Move forward."

Her heart was trying to beat its way out of her chest. This… it wasn't what she had expected. Then again, she wasn't sure what she  _had_ expected the result of all of this to be. Some sort of amalgamation between the Devil she knew and the human he actually was? Whatever was happening though, that wasn't it.

"What  _would_ you like me to call you then?" she asked softly.

He huffed, and shook his head. "I haven't decided yet. I keep hoping something will come to me. We're supposed to be talking about it in my next session."

She struggled for something to say, her thought process still reeling from this latest development. When nothing else came to mind, she asked, "Do you want me to stay today?" There was nowhere she needed to be, but she thought it best to check he still wanted her there. Wanted her to still visit even. The idea that he might not one day was painful. It never even seemed like a remote possibility before. Now though? Now she didn't know.

If he wanted to cut himself off from his old life, did that include her?

"If you don't mind, Chloe," he replied. "I think I might like to talk to you again after I'm finished."

He must have caught her flinch at the use of her name this time. His eyebrows furrowed. "Does it upset you, when I call you Chloe?"

"No—No, of course not," she said. "It's my name. It's just…"

"He never said it."

She nodded.

"Well, I would like to, if that's okay with you? We're not working together anymore after all, it seems foolish to continue to call you 'Detective'."

A lump caught in her throat. "Anymore? But you're coming back though, right? When you get out of here?"

_Wasn't that the point of all of this?_

He hummed non-committedly.

"Luci—" The sharp glare he gave her made her stop in her tracks. "I'm sorry. But… isn't that why you stayed? So you could come back to work?"

Withdrawing his hands, he leaned further back into the sofa. "It was," he admitted. "But things have changed. I find myself… well, wanting to find myself, as it were. Without all this Devil nonsense."

 _Devil nonsense._ It was almost exactly how she'd thought of it all from the moment she met him, and yet it seemed so strange to hear him finally say it.

"It wasn't nonsense." Upon seeing his confusion, she elaborated. "Not to you."

"Not to  _him,"_  he corrected. "But you're right," he said, nodding slowly. "It wasn't. It was worse. It was delusion."

He leaned forward again, a curious look upon his face. "Tell me, Detective..."

Her heart skipped a beat at the returned endearment, only to sink again as he finished.

"...Decker, how did you explain all of this to yourself?"

"What do you mean?" she asked with a frown.

"Well, I know why  _I_ believed it all," he said, tapping the side of his head. "But why did you?"

Her confusion wasn't abating. "I didn't, you know that."

"Ah, yes. But it wasn't  _all_  in my head, was it? That nurse last month, I didn't imagine what happened to her. This whole institution heard her screams. Your partner, he left so many people that way, so many criminals. I remember him being stronger than he should have been, faster than he should have been. I have memories of him doing things that should have been impossible, so impossible that I  _know_ I must have made them up, and yet I remember how you reacted at the time. So how much of that was real, and how much of it was fake? And if it was  _all_ real, then how did you manage to rationalise it? I'm having trouble understanding."

"Um, well…"

What answer could she give, when she didn't really know herself?

"I guess…"

He was watching with earnest eyes, as if the explanation was somehow going to enlighten him as to his own understanding.

"I don't know," she said, and he deflated.

She shifted to the edge of her seat, coming close enough as she could take his hands in hers again. "There was a time, I have to admit, where I wondered. You, he, seemed so  _sure_. And yes, I saw all these fantastical things… but then I shot you." She lowered her voice for that part, not wanting to attract unwanted ears.

 _"There's no wound or blood,_ do you remember saying that?" she asked, and he nodded. "But there was a wound. There  _was_ blood. And I guess…" she sighed, "I guess I thought if that wasn't true, how could anything else be?"

He closed his eyes, seemingly taking that in. When he opened them, he pointed to his leg. "I have no scar, you know." Moving his hand to his stomach, he said, "Nothing here, either. I remember how it felt when the bullet hit me, I remember  _dying,_ and yet I have nothing to show for it, no marks whatsoever."

"I always assumed you had a good plastic surgeon," she said, already realising how lame that sounded. "Or—"

"Or what?" he repeated, interest sparking.

"Your brother, he spun me a tale of blood packs and bulletproof vests. I didn't buy it at the time, but…"

She felt his hands tighten against hers, his whole body growing tense. "That would be the same brother that visited me here yesterday?" he asked. "The brother who told me to come to my senses, the brother that kept insisting that I was indeed,  _the Devil."_

Fury rose within her. Amenadiel had done that? After all the progress Lucifer had made? Or was it  _that_ which made him finally visit again in the first place?

"Why would he…?"

The unnamed man sat in front of her shook his head. "I don't know. Chloe, it's strange. He calls himself my brother… I have all these memories of him… and yet none of us growing up together. I have no idea what he looked like as a child. I have no idea what  _I_ looked like as a child. It's all a blank. And what I can remember, it's blurry at best."

"You think he's lying."

He shrugged. "It's certainly possible."

"What's the first thing you do remember?"

"Heaven." He smiled slightly, but it quickly vanished again. "Or what I thought was Heaven. There was so much light, so much warmth, and at first… love. It was all encompassing. Until it wasn't." A shudder ran through him. "Hell was darker, crueler. I remember the pain. The abandonment, and the loneliness. And when I escaped for the first time, from wherever I  _actually_ was… there was Amenadiel. To take me back. To always take me back."

She couldn't even begin to imagine what those places had been. Didn't  _want_ to. The idea of him having to go through that, and when he was only a child, no less...

"And that's what he's trying to do now, to take you home?"

He let go of her then, moving away slightly and staring out of the window.

"To his home, yes. But not to mine. Hell isn't home. And this "Heaven" he wants to go to? That's not home either."

She didn't want Amenadiel to take him anywhere. But if he  _was_ his brother, and he could prove it… well, he could have Lucifer transferred, or even try to forcibly remove him through the courts if he wanted to. Unless she found a way to stop it.

"Would you like me to look into him?"

It had never occurred to her to do so before. She had researched the man who thought of himself as the Devil, sure, how could she not? But by the time his brother had come along, she'd stopped, despite the fact that he could have been the key to finding out about Lucifer's past. It just... hadn't seemed as important anymore.

He paused briefly, before nodding. "I need answers. If we  _are_ brothers, it's obvious that at least one of us is adopted, but when I asked for records, proof,  _anything,_ he left. The one person who might be able to help me, won't. And… I think I know why."

She waited patiently; it was clear this was difficult for him.

"My brother is an angel.  _Thinks_ he's an angel. Or at least  _I_ thought he was. It's hard to know for certain. And, well... I was the Devil. Adversaries by our very nature. The memories might not be real, but one thing is clear. My brother has spent most of his life  _hating_ me."

"And you think he still hates you now?"

Closing his eyes for a second, he sighed. "I don't know. Sometimes he seems like my brother, and then other times…" He shook his head. "He helped our mother—" Glancing at her for a second, she could have sworn she saw heartbreak in his eyes before he quickly averted his gaze. "Well, that doesn't matter now, does it?"

"Of course it matters," she said, placing a hand on his knee. She'd remembered not to use his name, but only just.

"It did." There was a sadness about the way he said it. "At one time, it mattered more than anything."

She didn't understand, and even if she had, she wasn't sure this was something she could help him with. Hopefully, he would bring it up in therapy today. There was one thing she  _could_  do for him though, and that was to investigate.

"So, what can you tell me about Amenadiel?"

They talked for a while about what he could remember, most of it filled with metaphors and false memories, but some of it, especially the recent happenings on Earth, seemed more grounded in reality. He told her that Amenadiel's documented surname was Canaan, but that he suspected it was no more real than Morningstar had been. Eventually, they circled back to some of the more unusual aspects of their own cases involving Lucifer, and Chloe's interpretation of them.

When they reached her recent poisoning however, there was a sudden break in the conversation. Chloe looked at her partner curiously; she could tell there was something he wanted to say, he was just struggling on how to word it.

"How do you…" he started, but tailed off, his eyebrows narrowing. "How do you think he got the antidote? I keep trying to figure it out, but I can't. The professor was the only one who knew the formula, is that right?"

It was still so strange hearing him talk about himself in the third person. She nodded. As far as she was aware, they'd never found any record of the antidote, other than the ingredients. And despite her asking, Lucifer had never told her how he'd found it either. In the end, she'd had to put it down to the solution being illegal; it was the only explanation she had for him being so unwilling to tell her without lying about it.

She explained this as best she could, skipping over that at the time she'd been so devastated over what happened with Candy that she hadn't exactly investigated it in any detail. "How do  _you_  remember it?" she asked, suddenly intrigued.

"He died. Well, technically, he killed himself." Her eyes widened. Was that another metaphor, or something more serious, yet one more sign that she should have been encouraging Lucifer to get this kind of psychiatric help  _months_ ago?

"Don't worry!" he said hurriedly, seeing the look on her face. "It wasn't real, it can't have been. I might not have much in the way of medical expertise, but I'm fairly certain if you use a defibrillator on yourself, you don't just magically wake up again without help. Unless the woman I convinced myself was a demon and my therapist were actually involved of course, which is quite frankly ridiculous. It can't possibly have happened. Even if he'd tried another way... You don't remember him having a hospital stay, do you?"

"You did disappear afterwards," she pointed out.

"Yes," he said glumly. "Where I managed to rope someone else into my madness."

His eyes flickered to the floor. "It hurt him a lot to do that, you know."

 _Not as much as it hurt me,_ she thought. It was a subject, however, that she still didn't want to talk about, especially not with him. Someone who was Lucifer, but not Lucifer, all at the same time.

She swallowed. "So why would he kill himself? What on earth would that achieve?"

"Ah, you see, that's it right there," he said, pointing his finger at her animatedly. "Not on Earth. In Hell. Only way to get there, without wings. In his mind, he popped down, grabbed the antidote, and—" He froze, the colour draining from his face.

"Lucifer?" she said, forgetting herself for a minute and moving immediately to his side, her arm around his waist. "Are you alright?"

He shook his head violently, but she wasn't sure if it was at whatever memory he was reliving, or her use of his former name. "No, no, no. It didn't happen," he whispered to himself, rocking slightly in her arms. "I made it up. I wouldn't do that, I  _wouldn't."_ He looked at her pleadingly, willing her to understand. "I wouldn't. I  _promise."_

She held him tighter, stroking his hair. "Hey, it's okay. It's okay. It all turned out fine in the end, remember? I'm here, I'm alive thanks to whatever you did or didn't do."

He quieted, but his body continued to shake in her arms. "Whatever it was, it wasn't real," she said soothingly. "Don't forget, Lucifer hated 'Hell'. He'd never willingly choose to go back there."

Suddenly, he stilled. Raising his head, he looked her in the eyes, an incredulous expression upon his face. "Chloe, don't you know? He would have done anything for—"

"Mr. Morningstar," came a brisque voice from behind them. "It's time for your medication."

Chloe turned to see one of the more authoritarian nurses the hospital had to offer standing there. She reluctantly let go of Lucifer, who gave her a grateful smile before taking the offered cup. Just a month ago, he would have been teasing the same woman about how he didn't appreciate being bossed around outside of the bedroom, but now there was nothing, only compliance.

Sometimes she couldn't believe just how fast he'd changed.

"Time for therapy, I'm afraid," he said apologetically. He'd made it clear on more than one occasion how guilty he felt that she had to hang around waiting for him.

She smiled. "I'll work on this some more while you're gone, shall I?" she said, nodding towards the sketchpad, filled with his many stick figure portraits of the other patients in the room.

He grinned in reply, although it was somewhat dampened by the slight glaze in his eyes that formed as his medication started to kick in. "You'd think if I'd been alive for billions of years I'd have learned to draw a little better, wouldn't you?" he joked, before allowing the nurse to lead him away.

She couldn't help but laugh a little at that, as she picked up the pad and started to flick through it. When she reached his earlier drawings though, her smile began to fade. Trixie, Ella, even Dan, they'd all appeared at some point in the beginning. Now, they were nowhere to be seen.

She wondered how long it would be before she disappeared too.

…

The hour she was alone passed quickly. When it became clear he wasn't returning, she gathered up Lucifer's art supplies and left to seek him out. Despite his request, she still thought of him as Lucifer, she couldn't help it. How could she think of him as someone else when he still looked the same, still sounded the same? And yet… in the clothes the hospital provided for him, he  _didn't_ look the same. It wasn't the lack of a suit, it was the lack of something inside him that was missing.

_Something that had been the Devil?_

She headed to his room, where she found him sitting on the bed. He looked troubled, but not angry, not like she'd seen him many times before. "Did it go okay?" she asked, sitting down next to him.

"It did." His hands wrang together nervously. "I think I made a decision, about my name."

"Oh?" she said quietly. The thought that she might never get to call him Lucifer again… it made her stomach twist, leaving her feeling sick.

"Sam," he said with a nod. "I'd like to be called Sam from now on."

"Sam," she repeated, the word unfamiliar on her tongue. "Was that your name… before?"

His hands stilled. "I think so, maybe, yes. It was the first name that came to mind, when I started thinking about it, but it felt so  _wrong_ that I dismissed it."

"And it doesn't feel wrong anymore?"

He shook his head. "No… no, it does… but it also feels true, you know?"

Her heart was hammering in her chest. This was possibly the beginning of a new life for him, a world away from angels and demons, where he was forever the villain.

But to her, it felt like an ending.

Shaking his head once more, he sighed.

"And god knows I need some truth in my life."

God.

Not  _Dad_.

_God._

An ending indeed.


	4. Chapter 4

For the first time, Chloe found herself approaching the hospital feeling hopeful. Lucifer—no,  _Sam,_ had been doing so well lately. He grew a little more confident, a little more sure of himself each day. She could see less doubt there, that he'd ever been anything other than human. And, as she kept telling herself, that was a good thing.

Even if she did feel something sharp pierce her chest every time she saw a completely different person staring at her from inside her partner's eyes.

But he was making progress, progress that she realised now should have happened a long time ago. In part, she blamed herself, for playing into the role he'd created. For encouraging him, even. And yet… hadn't they all? He had so obviously needed serious psychiatric care, and yet even his own therapist had failed to refer him.

She no longer had to stay until after his sessions had finished. The last few times she had, he'd been quiet, thoughtful, often taking some time to himself to digest whatever it was they had discussed. Eventually, he assured her there was no need for her to wait for him anymore.

And so now she would simply keep him company until it was time for his session, at which point she would return to work. There had even been talk of reducing his dosage soon. All in all, it appeared he was well on the way to recovery, to normality. And she was glad for him.

She just couldn't figure out why the news didn't make her feel happier.

Rounding the corner, she was nearly at the common room when she felt a hand upon her arm. She turned to find Lucifer's favourite nurse standing behind her, the one she highly suspected he had convinced to keep her updated, before he—well, while he still could. That mysterious charm, the one that seemed to so easily get him his own way… it appeared to be all but gone now.

The information that had been relayed to her over the past few weeks no doubt went past the realms of confidentiality, but Chloe hadn't been able to bring herself to ask her to stop. He was her partner, her friend, and she cared too much about him to not know what was going on.

"Mr. Morningstar isn't with the others today," the nurse said quietly, motioning towards the nearby music room.

"Oh." Chloe frowned, wondering if there had been a change in his schedule. "He doesn't normally have a session at this time."

The woman shook her head. "There's no music therapy today. We just haven't been able to get him to leave the room. He's not hurting anyone though, so the on duty doctor decided to let him stay for now. I should warn you though… he's not having a good day."

Chloe's heart sank. Just when she thought things were getting better for him. "What happened?"

A doctor passed them in the corridor, and both women nodded and smiled. Once he was out of sight, the nurse pulled Chloe closer, explaining in hushed tones that they'd had a new arrival last night who didn't speak English. Apparently, without even asking what language the patient spoke, Sam had announced that as he was multilingual, a translator wouldn't be needed.

"When he failed to understand her though, he became… distressed. It's a shame," she said, looking at the door to the music room, "we haven't had to sedate him in a while."

"And he's been in there all morning?"

The other woman nodded. "He hasn't moved from the piano."

That made sense at least. "I think playing helps him, at least a little" Chloe said, her heart still heavy.

The nurse, who had already started to flick through her paperwork in preparation for dealing with the next patient, paused to look at her. "I haven't heard him play in weeks," she said with a frown, and it was clearly something she had only just taken note of. After a moment though, she blinked, going back to her work with a shake of her head. "I'd best be off anyway. As much as Mr. Morningstar would like to think so, he isn't my only patient." She placed a hand on Chloe's arm again before leaving. "Good luck with him. I think a visit from you is exactly what he needs right now."

_He hadn't played in weeks._

That couldn't be right, she told herself, the nurse had to be mistaken. With very little else to do in this place, Lucifer had practically been glued to the piano during his time here. In the past, she had suspected the piano was the only thing he truly loved in this world. Surely the room he had chosen to retreat to today was proof that nothing had changed in that regard, even if he did no longer identify as that same man.

At least "Mr. Morningstar" was another thing that remained the same. That meant Sam had yet to choose a new surname for himself, or remember the one he'd had before he became "the Devil." Secretly, she was hoping for the latter. It might finally allow her to track down his past, something which, minus any trauma, might be just want Sam needed.

But right now, what he really needed was her.

She pushed open the door to the music room and found him in the corner of the room, hunched over the upright piano. He straightened as the sound of the door closing permeated the space. "Chloe?" he asked, his voice trembling. Not for the first time, she wondered what it was that always alerted him to her presence. The sound of her footsteps, the smell of her perfume? Or perhaps after all this time they'd just become so attuned to one another that they always knew if the other were near.

"Hi Sam," she said cautiously, walking over to sit on the stool next to him, trying to fight the sense of déjà vu as she did. This wasn't Lucifer, she reminded herself for the hundredth time, not anymore. "You okay?"

The way his hands trembled as he caressed the keys told her everything she needed to know. "I can't do it," he choked out, staring straight ahead and refusing to look at her. When she followed his eye line, she saw the song sheet propped up there in front of him, shortly followed by the many that surrounded them, all crumpled up and tossed to the floor.

"What, read the music?" she asked gently. Placing a hand over his, she stilled his movements, reaching over with her other hand to take away the sheet that was causing him so much pain, and placing it on top of the piano. "That's okay, it took me ages to pick it up when I was a kid. And even then, I wasn't much good at it. By now I've probably forgotten it all."

He shook his head, dropping his eyes to the keys. "I haven't forgotten how to read… I've forgotten how to play."

Her breath hitched, and she fought not to show her shock. Music… music was everything to Lucifer.  _Had_ been everything to Lucifer. It was such a big part of who he was, and for that to be gone… it made her realise just how close she was to losing her partner completely.

Sam continued, unaware of her inner turmoil. "I—He never needed sheet music. All he needed were these." He looked down at his shaking, useless hands. His eyes glistened as he turned to Chloe. "What else am I going to lose?"

Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to concentrate on him. This wasn't about her, it wasn't about Lucifer, or what was left of Lucifer anyway. This was about Sam, and the hurt he was going through. She had to try and help him.

Drawing closer, she wrapped her arms around him. He leaned into the hug immediately, all traces of Lucifer's awkwardness at any unexpected physical contact long since gone. "It's alright," she said, running her fingers comfortingly through the hair at the back of his head. "For everything you lose, you'll gain something new, I promise."

He stayed silent, the only sign of his distress the wetness she could feel dampening the material of her shirt. It only made her hold him tighter. After a few minutes he pulled away, his face solemn. "But what if there are things I don't want to lose?" he asked, and that was when she realised he was holding her hand, and  _exactly_  what he meant.

"There are some things you could never lose, Sam. I can promise that too."

He looked relieved, and she wished she could say she felt the same. She just… she wasn't sure this place was doing him any good anymore. An idea struck her. Lucifer had refused to leave, but Sam… maybe Sam was different.

"Are you sure you want to stay here?" she asked hopefully. "You've been so much better lately... I could try and get you out, get you back to normality for a bit? It might help."

To her dismay, he shook his head. "No. Like you said, I'm getting better here. The doctors think so too." He smiled, small and shy. "But even they don't know how much."

Twisting his body away from the door, he slowly pulled up his sleeve, as though he were revealing a secret. And he was... just not a good one. The skin of his arm was littered with tiny cuts, not deep by any means, but enough as the still healing wounds stood out in stark contrast to the paleness of his skin. Chloe gasped at the sight. Had somebody done this to him?

She knew as soon as she saw his face that they hadn't.

"I bleed when you're not around now, see?" he said, almost proudly. Patting his arm, he winced slightly at the pain. "Human as can be." He searched her face, obviously seeking her approval.

But she couldn't give it. How naive she'd been, thinking he was ready to leave. She knew he was desperate to prove he  _wasn't_ Lucifer, but she had no idea that he was willing to injure himself in order to do it.

"Sam, you can't do this, you can't hurt yourself like that," she said carefully, not wanting to upset him. But it was an effort made in vain. Disappointment flashed over his face, and he yanked the sleeve back down over his arm. She reached for him again, but he shied away. Silence fell between them, and without knowing what else to do, she stood to leave. It was clear to her now that she wasn't going to be able to provide him with the help he needed, not yet anyway. "I'm sorry," she said, "but I'm going to have to tell someone about this."

No sooner had she taken a step though than he grabbed her by the wrist, his eyes flickering frantically towards the doorway. "No. Don't.  _Please_. I know I may have gotten a little… overexcited, but it was just a test. I just needed to know. I won't do it again. I  _promise."_

The doubt must have shown on her face. "That's what we do, isn't it?" he said, a little desperately. "Make promises to each other that we keep? Partners, right?"

Sighing, she briefly closed her eyes, and reluctantly sat back down. "I'll need you to prove it to me. Not just the next time I visit either. Every time."

He nodded. "I'm sorry."

Gently, she held his injured arm, wondering if she'd just made a big mistake. "You don't have to apologise. It's not your fault."

He flinched; a reaction she hadn't expected. "Then whose is it?" he asked, starting to get agitated again. He scoffed, and shook his head. "The man who never lies, that was who he claimed to be. But he did lie, didn't he? To you, to everyone, to  _himself._ I'm human, Chloe.  _Human._ Always have been. How many years of my life have I lost, pretending to be something I wasn't?"

She scrambled for something to say, anything that would calm him down. "You might have been lost, Sam, but you're found now. You can move forward, we'll—"

"Found, am I?" he snapped, rising to his feet, the piano stool nearly toppling as he did, and almost taking Chloe with it. "And what exactly am I supposed to have found?" He began to pace, pulling at his hair in frustration. In that instant, all Chloe could see was Lucifer standing there, losing control. She'd always been able to pull him back from the brink. She didn't know if she could do that with Sam.

"There's nothing left up here, Chloe," he said, pointing at his head. "I'm empty. I'm  _useless._  Everything I loved is gone."

She rose, grabbing his uninjured arm and pulling him to a stop. "Not everything, Sam. You still have your voice, you still love to sing. You're learning to draw. You will find things you'll love, all by yourself. The piano, the languages… they weren't yours to lose. You don't have to love everything he did."

For a moment, she thought she'd gotten through to him, as he stared at her hand on his arm. But when he looked up, despair was all she saw in his eyes. "Don't I?" he said. "Then tell me, why do I feel this way about  _you?"_

And with that, he pulled away, grabbing the redundant sheet music and storming out of the room. The door slammed behind him, but she barely heard it, her mind racing as she processed what she'd just heard.

Oh.

Sam… he…

_Oh._

And that meant, Lucifer…

Oh.

_Oh no._

...

"I don't know what to do."

Chloe sat in her apartment, staring into the fire, a forgotten glass of wine in her hand. Her companion for the evening stayed silent beside her, a habit no doubt ingrained from years of dealing with clients in therapy. All for a career that was more than likely now over.

It was no wonder Linda had already managed to work her way through more than half the bottle.

Eventually, when it became clear Chloe wasn't going to elaborate, the therapist spoke. "About what, exactly?"

Chloe placed her drink on the coffee table, and buried her head into her hands with a frustrated groan. "About Lucifer. About Sam. About the hospital. About  _everything._ "

"You don't think the hospital is the right place for him anymore?"

It was less of a question, and more of a statement. It unnerved Chloe slightly, that Linda could see straight through her like that. What really worried her though is that she didn't know  _why_ she felt that way. Was it because she wanted to get Sam out of there? Or did she just want  _Lucifer_  back?

"I know  _you_ don't," she replied as she lifted her head, Linda having made that quite clear almost from the beginning. "Although I can't understand why. You're, or you were, his doctor. Shouldn't you want him to get help?"

Her friend took an extra large gulp of wine at the reminder that Lucifer was very much her former patient, and Chloe couldn't help but feel guilty for a second. "I did want to help him," she said, sounding morose. "I  _was_  helping him." She turned to Chloe, examining her for a moment. The look she gave her was stern, but not unkind. "But you're right, you can't understand. There are things you don't know, Chloe. Things I can't tell you. What I can tell you though is this. Lucifer should  _not_  be in that hospital. He doesn't belong there."

Reaching forward, Chloe emptied what little there was left in the bottle into her glass. She took a sip as she reclined back into the sofa again, tucking her feet up underneath her. "It's Sam now, remember?"

Linda flinched, and Chloe had to wonder at that. "Does that name mean something to you?" she asked, figuring that if Lucifer had told anyone about his past, it would be her.

"Not to me," the therapist replied, before shaking her head and giving her wine the side eye. A little unsteadily, she leaned over to place it as far away from her as she could, internally admonishing herself for the slip.

The name meant something to Lucifer then, but she'd pretty much figured that out already. What she didn't know how to figure out was  _why,_  not on her own. She needed someone who knew more about Lucifer, and the person he was before he came to Los Angeles, than she did. With Amenadiel and Maze out of the picture, Linda was her only option.

She felt a hand upon her shoulder. "Please don't ask me anything else," Linda said quietly. "Lucifer might not be my patient anymore, but he's still my friend, and I won't betray his trust like that."

Chloe snapped. "But he's not, is he?" she said, rising from the sofa to pace in front of the fireplace, completely forgetting to keep the sound of her voice down so as to not wake Trixie. "He's not anything anymore! I look at him, and all I see is a stranger. There's no Lucifer left now, there's only  _Sam."_

A noise came from behind her. She whirled around to face the front door, fully expecting to see her daughter awake and out of bed, thanks to her not-so-quiet outburst. To her surprise though, she found only her roommate, standing there as though she had single-handedly invented the phrase  _if looks could kill._

 _"What_  did you say?" Maze spat, the venom in her voice almost disguising her incredulity.

Chloe met her furor with anger of her own. "Oh, so  _now_  you care? Luci—" she shook her head, cursing herself for making the same mistake yet again. "Sam has been in the hospital for months now, and you haven't so much as visited him."

Maze turned her head, pointedly ignoring her, and looked at Linda. "He's calling himself Sam? And you  _allowed_ this?"

"There wasn't exactly much I could do about it, Maze," the former therapist replied with a frustrated huff, bending forward to retrieve the unopened bottle of wine and pouring herself another generous glass.

Maze stalked across the room until she was in Chloe's face. Her hands twitched by her sides, as if the temptation to pull out her knives was almost too strong to resist. Chloe took a step backwards away from her, but she could go no further thanks to the fireplace behind, the heat from the flames threatening to scorch the skin at the back of her legs.

"What kind of place have you taken him to?" Maze demanded, steel in her gaze as she looked Chloe over. "What have you  _done_  to him."

"I... We…" Chloe swallowed heavily, suddenly nervous for a reason she couldn't explain. Despite her racing heart though, she gathered her strength. "They're just trying to help him get better, Maze."

To her shock, the bounty hunter's reaction was to laugh. "You don't get it, do you? None of you humans do. He's an angel, the Devil, a  _king_. He already  _is_  better. Better than any of you."

Not for the first time, Chloe wondered how two separate people had managed to fall into the exact same delusion. And yet, despite the wild claims they made about themselves, until recently they both still seemed so… well, sane wasn't the right word to describe it, she supposed. Neither was normal.

But was insane strictly the right word either?

"That wasn't what I meant—" she started up again, but Maze didn't let her finish.

"Release him," she said, finally retreating slightly. Chloe looked at her in confusion, and Maze shook her head. "Lucifer wouldn't be there willingly. Whatever you've done, whatever deal you've made with him, tell him you don't want it anymore. Tell him he held up his side of the bargain, if you have to. Anything to stop this."

The message was clear.  _This is your fault._ It felt like a lead weight in the pit of her stomach. "Maze, I already tried that. He won't go."

This time, her roommate's knives did make an appearance, from wherever it was that she managed to keep them under all that leather. She twirled them once, twice, before glaring at each of them in turn. "Fine. I'll do it myself," she declared, before spinning on the spot and starting to march towards the door.

Chloe caught her by the arm. "You can't go there. He's going through enough at the moment. I… I found out he's been hurting himself today."

She heard Linda draw in a sharp breath from behind her. Maze, however, merely frowned. "Hurting himself how? ... _Did he take one of my blades?"_

To Chloe's ire, she actually seemed more annoyed by the fact Lucifer might have one of her knives, than concerned about what he might be doing with it. She knew Maze wasn't exactly a sympathetic kind of person, but she and Lucifer were still friends at the end of the day. This was getting more confusing by the second. "No…" she replied, "they wouldn't allow anything like that in the hospital. The wounds were shallow, more like paper cuts, I think. A lot of them."

"Paper cuts," Maze repeated, a look of disgust upon her face. " _Paper."_ Her eyes flickered back to Linda. "I'm getting him out of there."

She was out of the door before Chloe even had a chance to protest. Grabbing her phone, Chloe dialled the hospital, planning to warn them that trouble was coming. Less than a minute later, the sound of a motorbike could be heard tearing off into the street.

"You should go after her."

She turned to find Linda looking much more clear headed than she had earlier; Maze's visit had obviously had the effect of sobering her up, much like it had herself. "I can't," she said reluctantly, casting a worried glance to the sliding door next to her. "Trixie…"

"I'll look after her." When Chloe hesitated, she pointedly slid the still full wine glass away from her across the table. "We'll be fine.  _Go."_

She didn't need telling twice.

…

When she reached the hospital, all was quiet. She enquired at the reception desk if anyone fitting Maze's description had been by, but as she suspected might be the case, they hadn't seen her. Chloe hadn't been able to spot her motorbike in the car park either. Perhaps she'd decided against doing this on the way over? Unlikely, but it couldn't hurt to hope.

The door to Sam's room was open when she got there; the only one along the corridor that was. At this late hour, most of the other residents were probably long since asleep. It was lucky really that she'd managed to build up such a good relationship with some of the staff here over the last few months, otherwise she doubted she would be allowed to be here at this time of night herself.

She found Sam sat up in bed, looking pale. He didn't seem to notice her at first, until she quietly knocked on the door. His head snapped up at the sound, and when his eyes met hers, he drew in a deep breath before sighing in relief. "Chloe…" he said softly, and a small smile graced his lips.

"Are you okay?" she asked, closing the door behind her and sitting next to him on the bed, visually checking him over. "Did Maze hurt you?"

He shook his head. "No… it was strange, really. She barged in here, took one look at me, and then just… left. I have no idea what she intended to do, but whatever it was, she must have changed her mind for some reason."

Maze rarely changed her mind about anything. "And that's it? She didn't say anything at all?

" _I'll find a way to fix this."_  He winced slightly as he said it, then shrugged. "That was it."

She knew exactly what had bothered him. Moving closer, she took his hand in hers. "You're not broken, you know," she said, trying to provide some measure of comfort. "Maze, she—"

"Belongs in here as much as I do?" he finished for her.

She had to laugh at that. "I'd like to see them try to keep her here."

They lapsed into silence for a moment, the only sound the quiet rasp of skin stroking skin as she ran her thumb over his knuckles soothingly. He looked up at her, those dark, soulful eyes making her breath catch, as they always had in moments like these. "You really came all this way just to see if I was okay?" he asked, and she could see the self-doubt there, one of the few things left from Lucifer that hadn't been forgotten. That probably  _couldn't_  be forgotten.

"Of course," she said, giving his hand a squeeze.

His eyes fell away again, captivated by their joined hands. "You must have cared about him a lot," he said, his voice wavering.

"Hey." Tucking a finger under his chin, she raised his head up again so that he had no choice but to look at her. "I care about both of you. Nothing's going to change that."

Something flashed across his expression, too quick to identify. He nodded to himself slowly, as though she'd given him the answer to a question she didn't know he was asking. And then, before she could do anything to stop him, he kissed her.

For one single, blissful moment, she was right back at the beach. The instant his lips touched hers, that same sensation of  _home_  washed over her, that feeling from deep within that said this was right, that there was nothing more right than this.

But then as quickly as it came, it was gone, and all she was left with was  _wrong._

This wasn't Lucifer. He didn't hold her like Lucifer would, didn't feel like Lucifer in her arms. He certainly didn't kiss like Lucifer had either, all smooth skill with just a hint of hesitation that had only endeared him to her more. No, Sam's kiss was passionate, desperate even, as though he were trying to prove something to himself. Or perhaps, to her.

The kiss barely lasted more than a couple of seconds before she pushed him away. "No Sam," she said, keeping her voice as neutral as she could make it. "We can't. I'm sorry. This isn't right."

She hated herself for the pain that crossed his face. One blink later though and his defences slammed into place, completely locking any emotions he was feeling away. Another thing she'd seen Lucifer do frequently.

Perhaps there was more of the Devil left inside him than she thought.

"I understand," he said. "You don't love me like you did him."

She opened her mouth to protest, for after all, she and Lucifer had never declared any kind of love to one another. But he raised a finger to her lips, wordlessly asking for her silence for just a little while longer.

"He wasn't worthy of you though… and I… I can be. Just give me time."

The longing on his face, the pleading in his eyes, they left her lost as to what to do, what to say. To give him false hope seemed unfair, and yet she didn't want to hurt him so badly that he ended up losing the progress he'd made.

Choosing neither option seemed the easiest route to take, at least for now. She nodded slightly and smiled at him as she stood, letting her hand slip out of his embrace. "I'll see you tomorrow, Sam," she assured him, and he too smiled in return. "Sweet dreams."

And with that she slipped out of the room, trying her best to hold back the tears as she made her way to her car. There would be no sweet dreams for her tonight. No dreams of the ocean, of the sand and the sea air, and a kiss that signalled the start of something precious and new.

No, tonight she would only dream of the kiss that told her it was over.


	5. Chapter 5

She thought Sam would be happy, the day they said he could leave. Instead, his reaction could only be described as complete indifference. Here, there, it didn't matter. It was all the same to him now.

Lucifer had always been a dichotomy to her, the light inside him fighting against the darkness. These last few months, it seemed as though the light was finally winning. He was a good man, she knew, and when her initial research reminded her that the man he claimed to be had once been an angel, it had come as no surprise.

Foolishly, she had thought that once the Devil had been removed, the angel was all that would remain.

She couldn't have been more wrong.

There was nothing left of Lucifer in Sam now. But there was also nothing much left at all. He wasn't living, he was simply existing, a hollow shell of the man he used to be. Too late, she had realised there had never been two halves of Lucifer, the black and the white. He'd always been whole, a life lived in the grey. Just like everyone else in this world.

How she could ever have believed otherwise was a mystery to her.

"Sam," she said, placing her hand on his shoulder as she approached from behind. "It's time to go home."

He didn't look up from what he was doing, his pencil flying furiously across the page as he continued to study the landscape in front of him through the window. She smiled as she looked at the drawing; he was getting better, with practice. Perhaps it would be the same as he settled into his new life.

"Home?" he asked, his voice strangely absent of feeling. "I don't have a home, Chloe, surely you know that." Another few seconds and his grip on the pencil suddenly increased, his knuckles turning white. "And I'm not going back  _there_ ," he insisted resolutely.

It wasn't the first time he had expressed his reluctance to return to Lux. "I know, and you don't have to," she assured him. She'd dropped by the penthouse only a few hours before, hoping to pick up a few things for him. But everywhere she looked, everything she found… it was all Lucifer, not Sam. With his unruly curls and unsure stance, Sam would never look right in one of Lucifer's suits. And he would hate it. A further search of the wardrobe had revealed only a few casual items of clothing, all of which strangely reminded her of her ex. In the end, she'd resorted to going shopping, selecting the basics of what he might need.

She didn't know him well enough to buy something more specific.

Not when he didn't even know himself yet.

"You can come home with me, at least for a little while. Would that be okay?"

He stopped drawing, and looked at her with something akin to wonder. A timid, yet genuine smile appeared on his face, the first she'd seen in a long while. No words were needed to tell her that with him, that was more than okay.

Her fingers moved until they rested on the back of his neck, smoothing through the hair there comfortingly, as she prepared to bring up a subject both of them had been avoiding. "And then, when you're feeling more like yourself, we can see about you coming back to work."

The smile disappeared from his face immediately. He stood abruptly, his pencils scattering to the floor. "That won't be happening, Detec—" Grimacing, he stopped and shook his head, chastising himself for the mistake. A rare mistake, these days. " _Chloe_. I'm not him. I won't be of any use to you now." He looked away so she couldn't see his face, pointedly ignoring her as he crouched down and began to clear up the mess he'd created.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said, and although she didn't mean to, the words sounded a touch more scolding than the reassurement she intended them to be. Bending over slightly, she touched his shoulder again. "You don't know that."

He looked up at her. "You're right," he said, picking up the last pencil. Standing, he gathered his sketch pad, neatly tucking his chair away under the desk. "But you do. Or you  _should._ "

WIthout giving her a chance to reply, he strode towards the door, heading for his room. "Let's go then. If leaving is what you want, then leave we shall." He glanced back at her over his shoulder as he walked away, all fake bravado and cheer. "Best to get on with it, yes? Chop, chop!"

Her eyes grew wet, and she blinked the tears away, relieved he hadn't seen. Sometimes he still sounded so much like Lucifer…

It was pointless to think like that now though. With her heart sinking, she followed him through the door.

...

The ride back to her apartment was spent in silence. Every time she dared to glance at Sam, his gaze was firmly fixed out of the window, as if he couldn't bear to look at her. Internally, she sighed. This had been a bad idea.

They hadn't spoken about that night he kissed her, but it hung like a heavy weight between them, making the time they spent together awkward and tense. It didn't help when, thanks to her ever growing workload, the department had finally asked her to scale back her visits. She knew Sam had taken it badly, thinking it was her choice. She still went as often as she could though, and during the past couple of weeks on the run up to his release, she had begun to think they were finally starting to move past it.

It was what had led her to believe this was the best solution, at least for now. Because where else was he supposed to go?

Linda was still under investigation for her conduct during Lucifer's stay; having him living with her wasn't exactly going to help with that. She didn't trust Amenadiel not to encourage his delusions to return—not that she had any idea of his living situation anyway. Neither Dan nor Ella had the space, and although her partner could easily afford a hotel, there was no way she was leaving him alone, not there or in one of the halfway houses the hospital had suggested.

Unfortunately though, her own home wasn't exactly ideal either. Even if she took away the problem of Sam's feelings for her away, there was still Maze to deal with. Chloe had no intention of letting her anywhere near Sam if she could help it, but it was going to be impossible to completely avoid, not with both of them living there. Thankfully, Chloe barely saw her these days, what with her being busy keeping things going at Lux.

 _Lux._  What was going to happen to the club she didn't know. Lucifer's wealth, his properties… she could only imagine how overwhelming it was all going to be for the man sat beside her. In his current state, it wouldn't be surprising if he just chose to give it all away. She couldn't help but picture Lucifer's horrified reaction to that, and had to bite back the laughter that bubbled up at the image, lest it turned into a sob.

When they pulled up, Sam exited the car without speaking, gathering his few belongings and waiting for her to lead the way. She patted his arm and smiled before unlocking the door, relieved that she hadn't seen Maze's motorbike in its usual space. At least there would be time to get him settled in, as much as one could be settled in on a couch that is.

No sooner had he set foot in the apartment though, than an excited shriek sounded from the direction of Trixie's room.

_Oh no._

Too late, Chloe realised that the school bus must have dropped her off earlier than usual. She felt the usual sting of guilt for failing to be here to let her in, but there was no time to dwell on it, not when her daughter was already barrelling towards the man she thought was her friend.

"Lucifer!" she squealed, arms outstretched, ready to encase him in her usual iron grip around his legs. Two steps away from contact though, she ground to a halt. Looking up at him with a scowl, she poked him in the stomach. "You're not Lucifer," she said accusingly. "Where's Lucifer?"

"Trixie, babe," Chloe said softly, as her daughter's glare turned to her. "This is Sam. He's going to be staying with us for a while." She knelt down, taking Trixie's hand. "I want you to be nice to him, okay? He's been through a lot."

She cursed herself for not explaining to her what was going on earlier. But her monkey believed Lucifer when he said he was the Devil, she always had. Chloe hadn't had the heart to shatter her illusions in the man her daughter had come to love, but by doing so it seemed she'd made things ten times worse.

"I…" Sam started hesitantly, kneeling down beside her and looking more nervous than she'd ever seen him. It was an expression that didn't sit well on Lucifer's face, the confidence that had once adorned his every feature completely absent. "I know Lucifer was your friend. I hope we can be friends too, eventually."

Trixie appeared to consider this carefully. Chloe subtly squeezed her hand, prompting her to reply. She knew her monkey would do the right thing. "Do you want to play monopoly later?" she asked, a test to see if this 'Sam' was willing to indulge her in her favourite game.

He gave her a small smile. "I would like that very much, Trixie."

Chloe closed her eyes, anticipating the inevitable reaction. The second the nickname came out of Sam's mouth, she felt her daughter snatch her hand away. " _No_ ," she said, her bottom lip trembling. " _I want Lucifer!_ " She could only watch as Trixie turned on her heel and ran back to her bedroom, the door swiftly sliding shut behind her.

Standing, she stole a glance at Sam, who quickly tried to hide the devastation on his face. He was almost as good at it as Lucifer had been.

Almost.

"I'm sorry," she blurted out. "I should have prepared her better…"

He smiled at her kindly, although it didn't quite reach his eyes. "There's no need to apologise, really. It's understandable. She misses him." His lips twitched, and his eyes flickered away from her. "And she's not the only one."

"Sam, I—" She reached for him, but he was already halfway to the living area, depositing what little he carried onto the armchair and taking a seat upon the sofa. He looked so small sitting there, a sharp contrast to the man who had always reclined in the same spot as if he owned the place.

Following, she curled up at the opposite end of the sofa. Before she could speak though, he nodded toward the cupboard where they stored the games. "I believe I remember how to play Monopoly," he mused. "Or at least, I could learn?"

There was so much more to that question, words he couldn't bring himself to say, and yet she heard them all. Could he remember who he was, without the Devil? Could he learn to be his own man, without the experiences that had once shaped his very being? Could he be who he wanted to be, whoever that really was?

She took his hand, and he focused on her once more. "Yes, Sam," she said. "I believe you can."

…

They watched television for a while, until Chloe excused herself to prepare some food, politely declining Sam's offer of help. It was simply too strange, sitting so close to him without the constant running commentary on what they were watching, the immature laughter at even the slightest innuendo. She hadn't realised just how  _hard_  it was going to be having him here.

Dinner was a quiet affair, her daughter being nothing more than cordial to their guest. Trixie would warm up to him, she knew, but in the meantime, her indifference had to hurt. After being excused from her normal chore of clearing the plates, Trixie retreated to her bedroom, under the guise of homework. Chloe promised she'd be in soon, both to check it over and read her a story before bed.

Sam took over where Trixie had left off, and together they made short work of both the dishes and the mess on the countertops. It reminded her of the many times she'd put her daughter to bed in the past, only to come back into the kitchen to find Lucifer had already cleared everything away. She wasn't sure whether he genuinely did it to help, or because he was a neat freak, but either way, she'd always appreciated it.

She hadn't told him that often enough.

Something must have shown on her face, for the next thing she knew, Sam was removing the last dish from her hands, depositing it onto the counter. "It's okay, you know," he said quietly, "to mourn him."

Her breath hitched. "He's not dead," she replied, without thinking, that one part of her brain that was still in denial speaking for her.

"Yes," he said, his expression solemn, "he is."

Unable to hold back her sharp intake of breath, she pulled away, fleeing to the safety of Trixie's room, before he could see the extent of the damage his words had inflicted.

When she eventually returned an hour later, Sam was once again seated on the sofa, the box of monopoly in front of him as he intently examined the instructions. It was moments like this that she could really see him as his own man, completely separate from Lucifer, who she was pretty sure had never stopped to read the rules in his entire life.

Sam looked up, having caught her watching. "How's it going?" she asked, drifting closer, but opting to perch on the edge of the armchair this time, rather than next to him. If he noticed the deliberate distance she placed between them, he didn't comment on it.

"It appears I remember the basics," he replied. His eyes narrowed. "You like to be a car, don't you? And your daughter… a top hat?" His fingers idly played with the tokens that sat in the box. "I rather think I might be a shoe."

If what he had said earlier had hurt, this was like pouring salt in the wound. She leapt from the armchair as though it had suddenly become electrified, stammering her excuses about a long day and an early night. Picking up the blanket and pillows she'd procured earlier, she thrust them in his direction, everything inside her screaming that she needed to get away as soon as possible, before she broke down in front of him completely.

Unfortunately though, she only made it to the stairs before he spoke again. "He enjoyed this, you know. Far more than he ever told you. I'm not sure there was anywhere else he would rather have been than here."

That was the final blow. Her heart in pieces, she left Sam there without so much as a goodnight, words beyond her. Crawling underneath the covers, she held the suit jacket she had not so accidentally collected from the penthouse close to her chest, and silently wept for the man she'd once known.

When she awoke the next morning, Sam was gone.

…

At first, she thought he might have gone for a walk. Then, she worried her reaction last night might have scared him away. Even worse, had he heard her crying?

It was the broken picture frame on the floor that made her think otherwise.  _Signs of a struggle,_ the part of her brain that was always on the job said. She picked up the frame, careful of the glass. It was one of her favourite pictures of her and Lucifer.

Perhaps Sam had been looking at it when he was taken.

The word  _taken_  sank in, and suddenly she knew without a doubt that was exactly what had happened. And not only that, she knew who was responsible too.

Grabbing her phone, she fired off a text, adding to a thread that was usually full of babysitting requests.

_Where is he?_

The reply was almost immediate.

_Somewhere you won't find him._

Her attention was drawn to where Sam's belongings were piled upon the armchair, including his medication. The idea of what could happen to him if he came off them cold turkey chilled her to the bone. She dialled Maze's number, praying she'd answer. There was no other option, she had to convince her to bring him home. Whatever it was she had planned, it couldn't be good for Sam.

Maze answered on the third ring.

" _What?_ "

"Bring him back. Now."

"Not happening, Decker."

"Maze, you left his meds here. He  _needs_  them."

"No, he  _doesn't_. That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"Look, just bring him back and we'll talk about this, okay?"

" _Talking_  is what got him into this mess. I swore an oath once, Chloe, an oath to protect him. Even from himself. I'll protect him from you as well if I have to."

"You're not protecting him, Maze, you're  _hurting_  him!"

"I'm saving his life. Maybe one day, you'll understand that."

The line went dead.

Chloe stared at the phone, unsure what to do. On the one hand, she didn't want to get Maze into trouble… but Luci—Sam,  _Sam,_ dammit, was going to be in more trouble if she didn't report this. She looked back at the unopened hospital bag, next to the pillow and blanket he'd so neatly folded there.

With a sigh, she called it in.

…

Three weeks later, and there was still no word.

She'd spent every day on a fruitless search, combing through Lucifer's many properties, interviewing as many people who owed him favours as she could, anything to help locate him. But unsurprisingly, a bounty hunter who found people for a living knew exactly how to hide where no one could find her.

When she arrived back at the apartment that evening, she was exhausted. Dan had offered to take Trixie for the night, and she had gratefully accepted, citing a relaxing bath before bed. They both knew however that what she would actually be doing was making more calls, finding yet more locations to scout out.

She couldn't keep doing this, Dan had told her.

But she couldn't give up, either.

Reaching the front door, she had just started to rummage in her bag for the key when she noticed it was ajar. Drawing her gun, she nudged it open, silently entering the apartment. Everywhere was dark with the exception of the living room, where the dwindling flames of a once roaring fire cast a warm glow over everything nearby… including the all too familiar figure sat in the armchair beside it.

"Hello, Detective."

Relief crashed over her in a wave. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry, happy beyond belief to hear that greeting she'd missed so much… but also strangely saddened at the thought of what might have been lost because of it.

She moved closer, her hand shaking as she holstered her gun. "You're back?" she asked, a question with two meanings.

His silhouette nodded in the darkness. "It would appear so."

When she reached him, she crouched down, her hands on his knees, reassuring herself that he was there, that he was real. She looked up, tears in her eyes, and inhaled sharply at the sight of him. Bruises covered almost every inch of his face, a multi-coloured canvas for the half healed cuts and welts that joined them.

"What happened?" she breathed, wanting to reach up and stroke his cheek, but forcing herself not to. Causing him more pain was the last thing she wanted right now.

He chuckled bitterly. "Maze has, shall we say, a somewhat unique method of releasing the monster."

She didn't even want to think about what that meant. "I'm sorry," she said softly. Sorry for everything that had happened, and sorry for not finding him in time. He leaned forward to cradle her face with his hand, using his thumb to wipe away her tears.

"Believe me, darling, enduring Maze's attentions was nothing, not compared to listening to my brother drone on at least."

So, Amenadiel had been in on it too. That made sense; he had failed to get back to her on any of her calls for help, but she'd had no luck trying to track him down either.

"And Sam…?" she whispered.

Lucifer jerked away from her, yanking his hand back as though she'd burned him. "Don't call me that," he snapped, his eyes glowing red for a moment as they reflected the firelight. " _Never_ call me that."

"Okay! Okay," she said, raising her hands placatingly. He stared into fire, his breathing rapid. Sam's voice echoed through her mind. " _It feels wrong… but also true."_

Whoever Sam was, whoever he could have been, he wasn't the man in front of her now. He was a part of his past, and apparently, had no role to play in his future. "Back to thinking of yourself as the Devil then?" she asked cautiously, although she already knew the answer.

"I  _am_  the Devil," he insisted, for what had to be the thousandth time since she met him. He sounded weary, and she decided to go easy on him, moving from her position on the floor to curl up on the sofa instead.

"So… I should call you Lucifer again?"

The corner of his mouth quirked in amusement. "You may call me what you like, darling. Humanity has made quite the game of selecting monikers for me over the years. But yes, I would prefer you refer to me as Lucifer."

And there they were, right back to where they had started. The detective and her partner that believed himself to be the Devil, despite the evidence to the contrary. The world he had built, wherein he was considered the villain of the piece, was firmly back in place, and the worst thing was… it seemed to be what was best for him.

He might be a bit battered at the moment, a bit broken after what he'd been through… but he was, in fact, whole again. And she was glad of it.

"I'm never going to think of you that way, you know," she pointed out, even more convinced now than ever of his less than divine origins.

His smile turned wry. "If only that were true, Detective. However, I find myself hoping you never have to. That you never see the 'real me', as it were."

She frowned. "Why?" she asked, genuinely curious. Didn't everyone want to be known, truly known, by at least someone in their lives? She had to admit, somewhere along the line she had begun to believe that for her, that was Lucifer.

He rose from the chair, his movements stiff, the damage inflicted upon him apparently more severe than she had realised. Belatedly, she wondered if she should be taking him to the hospital. It was a thought soon forgotten though, as he took his turn to kneel down in front of her. Lifting her hand to his lips, he kissed the skin there gently, those dark eyes of his boring into her own.

"Because, Chloe," he said solemnly, "that will be the day I lose you."


	6. Chapter 6

_Two years later..._

The city was beautiful tonight.

The myriad of lights from below the penthouse sparkled as she walked towards the balcony, silhouetting Lucifer against a darkened sky. Her heart quickened, the nervousness she'd felt on the elevator ride up making its presence felt once more.

It was rare they spent time together like this these days. Lucifer had managed to split his life into two distinct halves. There was work, with her, and then there was everything outside of that.

Everything to which Eve was welcome, and she was not.

The aforementioned girlfriend was absent this evening; no doubt gracing the patrons of Lux with her presence. She was as big a draw to the club now as Lucifer had ever been, the effervescent joy she emanated attracting people to her like moths to a flame. Chloe envied her that.

She envied her a lot of things.

The reason Eve wasn't there with them tonight was because Lucifer had asked her not to be. What his girlfriend's reaction had been to his request to leave them alone to go over a case, she didn't know, but she could guess. The frequent attempts to delay Lucifer's arrival at the precinct, doing her best to tempt him away from crime scenes... her actions said it all. Work, the reason for the two of them spending time apart, was an excuse that was wearing thin.

And while it warmed her heart that he was keeping to his promise of making their partnership a priority, she couldn't help but feel guilty that it might be having an adverse effect on his relationship.

Not  _too_  guilty though.

...And there was the rub.

Despite everything they'd gone through lately, despite seeing him almost every day, she  _missed_ him.

She missed this.

There were no more game nights by the fire now. No more drinks in Lux after work to celebrate catching yet another killer. Those celebrations were reserved for someone else, and the games… well, they were certainly different.

But tonight was an exception. Lucifer hadn't lied when he said they needed to go over a case; he just hadn't admitted it was a case they'd already solved. Today had been difficult, for both of them. She'd known it would be from the beginning, from the moment the casefile landed in her hands, the words emblazoned across the front screaming out at her.

_Westridge Canyon Psychiatric Hospital._

Words that immediately instilled a feeling of dread.

Her immediate reaction had been to try to convince her partner to go home, knowing that the mere mention of the hospital would bring back enough painful memories for him as it was, never mind actually having to return there. But Lucifer was determined to stay by her side, as he always did. "The Devil doesn't run away, Detective," he insisted.

 _That_ little statement certainly earned him a raised eyebrow.

Their victim, Alan Tucker, had been a patient at the hospital for several months at the time of his death. According to the doctors, he was making slow but steady progress towards recovery; with medication, they estimated he would have been back home with his fiancé before the year was out. During her interview, the grieving woman told them through tears of his battle to get better, how hard he had fought for the life that awaited him with her if he could.

Thanks to a would be suitor of hers however, it was a future that would never come to be.

From the second they set foot on the crime scene, Lucifer looked nothing short of haunted. With the colour drained from his face, she couldn't help but picture him as he'd been on his last day here, the last day she'd seen him as Sam. She wondered if Lucifer was remembering that same day. Her partner anxiously hovered along the edges of the room as she talked to the other patients, and when a familiar doctor walked through the door, he all but fled out of the door.

After that, she tied up the interviews as quickly as possible, requesting that any remaining members of staff attend the precinct, rather than force Lucifer to remain any longer. But the damage had already been done. He spent the rest of the day on edge, snapping at everyone they talked to, his fingers constantly twitching against the nearest surface. When they finally apprehended the culprit, his fury boiled over, to the point where even she had struggled to calm him.

" _He had hope, and you ripped that away from him! He was getting better, better than the man he'd been, better for her. YOU DESTROYED WHAT THEY COULD HAVE HAD TOGETHER!"_

The pain and anguish in his voice as he screamed was something she would never forget.

It hadn't taken much persuasion on her part to convince him to let her handle what remained of the arrest. A confession back at the station was pretty much guaranteed by that point anyway. Lucifer had never been much of a one for paperwork at the best of times, but right now his hands were shaking so much she doubted he could even write straight. The second she gave her blessing for him to leave, he was gone, the sound of his convertible as it tore away from the scene quickly fading into the distance.

As their murderer was dragged off to holding, she found herself looking at her phone. The messages there were what you would expect between a detective and her consultant; the details of their assignments for the day, the when and the where. If she scrolled up though, past the litany of unanswered texts that marked her month long absence, there were the jokes, the casual late night conversations when Trixie was in bed and she didn't want to risk waking her with a phone call, and of course, the never ending string of Devil emojis.

The way they used to be.

Returning to the bottom of the screen, it was those messages he'd sent during her "vacation" that caught her eye.

_Detective, are you okay?_

_Tell me you're alright._

_I'm sorry. I know you don't want to speak to me. I just need to know you're alive._

_Chloe… I'm begging you. Send me something, anything. I won't come looking for you, I swear._

_Just say that you and the spawn are safe._

He didn't lie, she knew that now. While she'd been on the other side of the world, listening to the words of those who did, he had been here, alone, worrying about her. It was all he had ever cared about. Because that's what partners did for each other. That's what  _friends_ did.

She hadn't treated him much like a friend for a while now.

Her fingers were moving before she even truly thought about what to say.

_Can I come over tonight?_

The read receipt came through almost immediately. She waited, holding her breath as 3 dots repeatedly appeared across the screen.

_Whatever for?_

It was natural he would be surprised by her request, she supposed. After all, she hadn't been by the penthouse unless it was to request his assistance on a case since… well, since the night she told him she was terrified of him. The night his heart had shattered in front of her, causing wounds that were still visible even now. Their newfound professional relationship had done little to repair it, barely even scratching the surface of the pain she'd inflicted.

_I want to make sure you're okay._

She could picture him then, staring at his phone in confusion. It still came as a shock when people actually showed they cared about him, she knew. And perhaps now, she understood a little more as to why.

_If you insist, Detective. I can assure you though, I am perfectly fine._

Smiling just a little, she shook her head and typed her reply, wondering if he would ever realise just how often he lied to himself. It said a lot that he seemed to think he was the only person undeserving of the truth in this world

_I'll be there at nine._

…

Her partner remained standing on the balcony as she approached, a thin trail of smoke rising from his cigarette as he looked out over the streets below. "Detective," he greeted, without turning around to face her.

"How do you always know it's me?" she asked, removing her jacket and leaving it folded over the sofa as she moved closer.

"Who else would arrive so precisely on time?" he said, smirking as she took her place by his side. "Spend much time lingering in the lobby, did we?"

She flushed; he knew her too well. Once upon a time, that had been part of the problem, part of what had made her suspicious.

_The Devil has been manipulating human beings since the beginning of time._

Father Kinley's voice still echoed in her mind every so often, but not as much as it once had. Not like when his words had consumed her every thought, had made her doubt everything she knew about the man beside her.

As she always did when thoughts of Rome cropped up, she shoved the memories aside. Kinley had been wrong about Lucifer.  _She'd_ been wrong. This was the man who had saved her life, her daughter's life. The man who always tried to do the right thing, even if he so often failed. The man she had once fallen in love with.

Sometimes she wondered how she could have forgotten that.

"Penny for your thoughts, Detective?" The sound of Lucifer's voice brought her back to the moment, and he handed her a glass of wine. Her heart clenched at the sight, yet another reminder of what she had almost done. It was somewhat of a relief, knowing he would never know how close she came. She hoped though, that he knew just how much she regretted it, no matter the circumstances at the time.

"I'm not here to talk about me," she reminded him, taking the offered glass and sipping it, before settling into the nearest chair. He watched her for a moment, then knocked back what remained of his own drink and nodded, mostly to himself, it seemed.

"As you wish," he said, sitting down next to her and placing the tumbler beside the already half empty whisky bottle. "How long can you stay?"

For a moment, she suspected he might have already been trying to change the subject, but it occurred to her that perhaps he thought this conversation might take a while. Either that, or he was hoping it might be cut short. If it was the latter, as much as she loathed to say so, he would be granted his wish.

"Not long," she admitted reluctantly. "I could only get a babysitter for a couple of hours. Last minute, you know?"

He nodded again, and for a moment she thought she saw disappointment in his eyes. "Don't worry," she continued, aiming for jovial but missing the mark by a mile, "you'll be back downstairs with Eve before the party really gets started."

"Ah." He leaned over to pour himself another drink. "That's quite alright, Detective. The Doctor informs me that it is good for a couple to have… space, from time to time."

Chloe agreed, although if she were honest with herself, she suspected her definition of space was far greater than Linda's. Like, maybe a continent or two? She sighed, swirling the liquid inside her glass. She had no right to feel this way, she knew. But knowing didn't exactly stop the feelings now, did it?

They talked for a while about the mundane things, catching up on each other's lives outside of the job, both of them experts by this point at ignoring the elephant in the room. Eventually though, they finished working their way through the 'safe' topics; him carefully trying to curtail stories of his sexcapades with Eve, and her quickly running out of stories that weren't work related, now that her life  _was_  work again.

Now that he was barely in it.

And so they lapsed into silence. She debated on how to broach what had happened today. He'd never talked about his time in the hospital, despite her repeated attempts to get him to do so, back before she knew the truth. She had hoped that he might have opened up to Linda about it, but judging by his reaction to being back there, she highly doubted that was the case.

To her shame, she'd been so busy dealing with, well,  _everything_  these past few months, that she hadn't even begun to consider what it must have been like for him in the hospital until today. His experience had damaged him deeply, torn into the core of his being, nearly destroyed the very essence of who he was.

And she couldn't help but feel it was her fault.

Yes, in the end, the decision not to leave had been his. But that didn't alter the fact that it had been  _her_  that had asked him to stay in the first place. All the pain… the heartbreak that request had wrought… she was responsible for that, and the realisation tore her up inside. Somehow, without meaning to, she'd managed to play a part in making the Devil believe he was human.

She found herself asking the same question she had back then; was that a good thing?

Looking at her partner, she reached the same conclusion as before. No. It wasn't. Lucifer wasn't human, it was true. In many ways, he was so far above humanity that she didn't understand how he could find ordinary people like her to be so fascinating. But in others, he was more human than most. He struggled with who, and what he was, much in the same way she did.

And he deserved to be accepted for all that he was. She might not be ready to do that, might not  _ever_  be able to do that, but he had someone that did, and she was glad of it.

Even if she did wish it could be her.

"You shouldn't blame yourself."

Lucifer's words broke the quiet that had fallen between them, and for a moment she didn't understand what he was referring to. There was so much she blamed herself for these days.

He caught sight of her frown, and shook his head. "The hospital." She opened her mouth to speak, and he raised his hand, silencing her. "There is no need to lie, Detective, I know that you do."

Pausing, he directed his gaze away and back out towards the stars, before setting his whisky upon the small table that sat in front of them and letting his arm drop down against the side of his chair. She mirrored him, divulging herself of her now empty glass and allowing her own hand to drift nearer to his. They didn't touch, but with neither of them pulling away, they were close enough that if one of them so much as twitched, skin would brush against skin.

This was how it had always been with them. So very near, but never quite there.

"It was my choice. To stay, that is. I could have left at any time. Could have asked you to relieve me of my promise. I didn't. I wanted—" He hesitated, and she could tell he was on the verge of closing up again.

Shifted forward in her seat, she breached that final gap, gripping his hand tightly. "What, Lucifer? What did you want?"

He looked at her in shock, before his gaze lowered to their joined hands. Slowly, carefully, he curled his fingers around hers, and then he met her eyes again. "To be normal. To be  _better._ "

His hand shook, and she squeezed a little, silently letting him know that she wasn't going anywhere, that he could say whatever he needed to. He sighed, and closed his eyes. "There was a time… in the hospital, where I thought—where I believed _, completely_ believed, that I was human. And—"

She didn't say anything, waiting patiently for him to continue. Whatever this was, it was hard for him to say, and she didn't want anything to stop him now that he was finally actually  _talking_  to her.

He swallowed heavily, the edge of the chair groaning slightly where he was gripping it tightly. "And... I found myself imagining the life I could have, if I could just get well again. The life I could have had… with you."

She froze. That was why he'd chosen to stay? For  _her?_  Not for work, not for their partnership, but for her, to  _be_  with her?

His gaze flicked away from hers, and he let go of her hand, pulling away. "I was a fool," he said quietly. She wanted to reassure him, to tell him… to tell him what, she didn't know. The words wouldn't come, and given how things were between them now, she wasn't sure she should say anything at all.

Especially when all she wanted to tell him was that she had once dreamed of a life with him too.

A few more seconds of silence, and Lucifer rose gracefully from the chair, walking slowly towards the door to the penthouse. Before he crossed the threshold though, he hesitated. "But..." He looked back at her and sighed, and for the first time, she recognised what she now knew to be an ancient, endless sadness in his eyes. "I find I cannot regret it."

His last words hung heavily in the cool night air as he left her.

"I think that's the happiest I've ever been."

**Author's Note:**

> That's all she wrote, folks! I hope you enjoyed the slide back into canon at the end there. Sing it with me now, "Let's do the time jump, agaaaaaaain!"
> 
> Find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/NotOneLineFF) and [Tumblr](https://notonelineff.tumblr.com/) for sneak peeks and Lucifer chat.


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